Live data from Hacker News

Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

blog.comma.ai

51–60 of 318 posts

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#51

In every western country - except the US and England - the loser pays for the cost of the trial (all parties' lawyer fees + the court). Just this reduces frivolous lawsuits. If you have a good case, sure, go ahead. If your case is weak, you run a real risk paying not only for your lawyers but the other side as well. (Note that there are disadvantages to loser-pays as well. Image you legitimately want to sue corporati…

In England, the losing side usually pays at least a large portion (if not all) of the costs of the winning side. 100% cost awards are rare, but generally the costs burden is placed on whoever loses.

This seems to reduce frivolous lawsuits (depending on who is suing/being sued) but you can ask for a cost capping order to limit the amount you have to pay out if you lose, which partially helps address the issue of "they're too big/expensive to sue".

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#52
I frankly don't understand why a judge or jury would ever find for a company which has no revenue, other than through litigation settlements. I mean if they're not even selling a license or royalties for their patents, any cases should be dismissed.

We can call it the "use it or lose it" rule for patents.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#53
post #10
post #3

I always thought Hotz an interesting character. This paragraph adds to that impression: "What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. We will hire an amazing legal team, fight this, and while doing so invalidate his patents so they can’t be used against anyone else. Not because…

This has been Newegg's strategy forever... https://www.newegg.com/insider/newegg-vs-patent-trolls-when-...

Old Newegg. That lawyer has moved on along with the rest of the leadership after a change in ownership.

Also George Hotz fought and cowed Sony’s legal team when he was a kid in a saga involving ‘marcan42 of Asahi Linux. These patent trolls must be very foolish to try to intimidate him.

Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_...

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#54
post #14
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strikes me that a lot of today's ills would be solved (or replaced) by more individual agency. Gold applause to Hotz.

It seems to me that considerably more of today's ills would be solved by more collective action.

We definitely need more collective action, but a lot of evil happens because people in positions of power hesitate to do the right thing out of a sense of fiduciary duty.

Collective action could align the incentives better, but leaders willing to risk some of the company's assets to do the right thing should, IMO, also be encouraged.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#56
post #20
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strikes me that a lot of today's ills would be solved (or replaced) by more individual agency. Gold applause to Hotz.

If we all could spend a million on lawsuits… dunno if that is good.

That's the thing, if people fight instead of paying the Danegeld, then patent trolling becomes a losing proposition.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#57
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been Newegg's strategy forever... https://www.newegg.com/insider/newegg-vs-patent-trolls-when-...

Same for Cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/project-jengo-redux-cloudflares-...

Hotz literally mentions Cloudflare as an inspiration for this.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#58

In every western country - except the US and England - the loser pays for the cost of the trial (all parties' lawyer fees + the court). Just this reduces frivolous lawsuits. If you have a good case, sure, go ahead. If your case is weak, you run a real risk paying not only for your lawyers but the other side as well. (Note that there are disadvantages to loser-pays as well. Image you legitimately want to sue corporati…

In the US, if you lose a patent lawsuit, you will often have to pay legal fees and costs (within reasonable limits). It's the same as the rest of the western world for these specific suits.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#59
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been Newegg's strategy forever... https://www.newegg.com/insider/newegg-vs-patent-trolls-when-...

Old Newegg. That lawyer has moved on along with the rest of the leadership after a change in ownership. Also George Hotz fought and cowed Sony’s legal team when he was a kid in a saga involving ‘marcan42 of Asahi Linux. These patent trolls must be very foolish to try to intimidate him. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_...

Ok you can't tease us with a story and not at least link it.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The patent in the complaint doesn't even have anything to do with what we do as a company! It describes a system that calls 911 when it detects a crash (like onstar). Ignore the (very generic) title and read on in the actual patent. https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 We write open source ADAS software, and it doesn't have any functionality like that: https://github.com/commaai/openpilot But for…

The disclosures in the patent aren't what they are suing you over. Read the claims. Patents like this often have a lot of stuff shoved into the disclosure so that they can keep the patent application alive to write more patents based on the original disclosure. The claims appear to be written to read on devices like yours: My knowledge of your system is a bit dated, but I thought you had a device that you plugged int…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN